Okay, so I'm not going to lie, a lot of the documentary movies I watch do revolve around food. This is possibly because I spend a lot of time thinking about it as I try to eat less processed, more sustainable food. I watched this movie a while ago and really liked it, so I decided to watch it again recently.
The premise is that Morgan Spurlock changes his diet for one month to only food from McDonald's and agrees to have his meal 'super-sized' whenever they ask him. It follows the usual route with Morgan seeing doctors before hand who advise him against this, him enjoying the start of it, then his body really reacting badly to this diet and the doctors and specialists being absolutely horrified that the results were so much worse then they were expecting. The damage it does to his body over such a short period of time is pretty amazing, but not really surprising. One of the most memorable bits is where he's forcing himself to have yet another meal and ends up having to quickly open the car door to throw up.
It's not exactly surprising that eating that amount of fast food isn't good for you or that McDonald's uses clever marketing to get people to repeatedly choice their products despite the health implications, but it's still a very compelling documentary and a good reminder of that this type of food is actually doing to you.
The main thing that I've taken out of this movie is not that McDonald's is evil, though they're not great, but that all processed food with the same levels of sugar and salt is not only highly addictive but has serious implications for your health. Even if you never went to a fast food restaurant but only ate processed food at home the effect on your body would be very similar. It's also a good reminder of what happens when we allow companies that provide us with the food we eat to treat it as a commodity rather than a hugely important factor in our lives. When they only see if as an object for making money the actual effect it is having on us becomes much less important than the effect it is having on us.
I do still eat processed food and I do still eat at fast food restaurants, but just not as much as before. I try to make sure that, at the very least, my diet is 90% unprocessed foods made from scratch. This is not only better for me but is also much better for the environment. And I feel all the better for it.
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